Obamacare could lower your car insurance

It isn’t exactly the main pitch behind the health-insurance law, but a study released Wednesday by the Rand Corporation finds that as more people gain health insurance, the costs of other types of insurance could go down. In the case of car-insurance companies, the study points out that some uninsured people, upon suffering through a car accident, may then seek treatment for conditions they have that are unrelated to the car accident. If those types of conditions were covered by health-insurance companies, it could shave up to 2% off of the average costs incurred by auto-insurance companies, the study found. “It’s extraneous stuff you might get the auto insurer to pay for,” says David Auerbach, the lead author of the report and a health policy researcher with Rand Corporation. “It’s hard to tell what was actually caused by the accident.”

Of course, insurance companies could decide to keep these savings for themselves in the form of higher profits — if they actually materialize. And like many other aspects of the ACA, the final impact is going to vary by state.

In theory, if the ACA (Affordable Care Act) can achieve a 2% savings, that's fantastic, but lets wait and see if it actually trickles down to the consumer's premium.